چکیده انگلیسی

Large-scale information technology implementations are risky projects, and the challenges and risks multiply when multiple organizations are involved, as is often the case in e-government initiatives. Some of the risk can be addressed by carefully aligning the partners' motivations, which are affected by each organization's internal and external operational and information technology strategies. In this paper, we propose a strategic alignment framework and use it to examine the motivations of a set of collaborating government agencies and businesses in the pilot implementation of the Internet Payment Platform, an interorganizational, third-party hosted, e-procurement system. As we predict, the partners in this study had varied technical, political, economic, and operational motivations for participating in the project. Even so, the participating agencies reported positive outcomes from the project, and look forward to further collaboration on the next iteration of this e-procurement system.

مقدمه انگلیسی

The success or failure of an interorganizational information systems project is influenced by many technical, organizational, and political factors (Dawes, Pardo & Cresswell, 2004). When multiple organizations are involved, collaboration outcomes will depend upon the extent to which the project fulfills the disparate goals of each partner organization. Since participants have many reasons for joining an alliance, it seems likely that some participants' priorities will not be fully reflected in the system specifications. However, each participating organization will attempt to achieve alignment between its operational needs and the interorganizational system (IOS).
Strategic alignment theory (Henderson and Venkatraman, 1993, Luftman et al., 1993 and Chan and Reich, December, 2007) holds that effective information technology management achieves a coherent fit (or alignment) between an organization's business strategy and operations and its IT applications and infrastructure. In supply chains, strategic alignment is especially difficult to achieve because participants' technical infrastructures, processes, and strategic priorities are varied (McAdam & Brown, 2001). When a system crosses organizational boundaries, each partner aims to align their internal processes and systems with the interorganizational processes and systems (O'Toole & Montjoy, 1984). A new system may require significant change in organizational processes, and can have “ripple effects” on various stakeholders (Luftman et al., 1993 and Applegate et al., 2006). Thus, strategic alignment is an important consideration for designers of interagency systems (government-to-government, or G2G) and for systems designed to support transactions between agencies and private-sector partners (government-to-business, or G2B).
A necessary precursor to the success of a large-scale e-government project is a thorough analysis of the needs of all affected agencies, organizations and citizen groups. A strategic alignment approach to the expectations of each of these stakeholders would drive the design and use of the IOS and will foreshadow its success. Participants in G2G and G2B systems are motivated to join by various political, operational, technical and economic reasons. In this article we present evidence of how participants' motivations can differ by examining a pilot test of the United States Treasury's Internet Payment Platform (IPP). We conclude that careful attention to these four categories of participant motivations will lead to better acceptance by collaboration partners, reducing the risk of project failure.
The remainder of the article is organized as follows. The next section reviews prior research on strategic alignment and stakeholder motivations in governmental initiatives. We then describe the methodology and findings for the Internet Payment Platform case, discuss the complementarity of stakeholder goals, and finish with a discussion of implications for practice and suggestions for further research on strategic alignment within collaborations and IOS.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

The U.S. Treasury's IPP pilot project was a complex collaboration of large and small federal agencies plus large and small vendors. Success required acceptance by multiple partners with different needs: Treasury/FMS, agencies, vendors, the Boston Fed, and two software partners. Although there were technical challenges, other strategic alignment dimensions figured more prominently in participants' concerns.
When participation in a multi-stakeholder IT project is voluntary (as is usually the case in technology pilot tests), recruitment challenges can constrain decisions about system design and use. In an effort to attract or retain participants, project sponsors may over-promise, agree to incorporate non-essential functionality, or create expectations that they later cannot meet. Government agencies planning to initiate an interorganizational system are urged to pay careful attention to stakeholders' motivations for participating, and to understand the measures against which each stakeholder will evaluate the success of the endeavor. A strategic alignment analysis that assesses political, organizational, technical, and financial considerations should be undertaken early in an e-government project (Gil-Garcia & Pardo, 2005). This analysis can help establish a comprehensive set of specifications, help leaders identify appropriate project management mechanisms, set realistic expectations, and establish outcome metrics for gauging project success according to each participant's needs.
IPP participants' motivations varied, yet were complementary. This case study suggests that it may be more important for e-government project participants' motivations to be complementary than that they be tightly aligned with the sponsor's goals. Or, perhaps as long as strategic motivations are aligned, an interorganizational collaboration can withstand variations in participants' operational (or tactical) motivations. These observations merit further study in research on e-government initiatives. For example, strategic alignment issues in pilot tests may be quite different from alignment issues in wide-scale system implementations. Further research is needed on this issue, as well as to address the links between participants' motivations at the outset and the outcome metrics they use (or don't use) to gauge the success or failure of an interorganizational system. The participants in the IPP project were content to make do with rough, subjective outcome measures for this pilot test. Further study is required to determine whether tighter alignment between motivations and outcome metrics is beneficial and to closely examine the pitfalls that organizations encounter in their attempts to measure system and process performance according to their a priori motivations. It stands to reason that unexpected benefits and problems may prove to be equally or even more meaningful to participants than anticipated benefits and challenges, perhaps in a pilot environment.
The present study extends strategic alignment theory, which was based on individual businesses' alignment issues, to interorganizational G2B and G2G initiatives. Another area worthy of further study would be strategic alignment issues when e-government systems and processes cross national boundaries. The increased complexity of political and cross-cultural challenges when governments collaborate adds yet another set of risks.
Clearly e-government initiatives crossing organizational and jurisdictional boundaries are on the rise, and the pace of change is quickening. Sponsors of G2G and G2B systems and processes will need to establish new governance and communication mechanisms and project management tools to address the varied political, technical, operational, and economic motivations of the participants.